Rethinking the Humanities Endowment

By STANLEY N. KATZ

Let's be clear. The National Endowment for the Humanities is
about money. The social critic Dwight Macdonald once quipped that a
philanthropic foundation was a large pile of money surrounded by
sucking noises. That is also a perfect description of the
endowment. For almost two decades, we who have worked for federal
support for the humanities have been caught up in debates about
what the endowment should finance (research, state programs,
fellowships, regional centers, the documentary-editing